My partner and I are currently attempting UI for 3rd child

Heidi

My partner and I have two sons. Our oldest, who is 15, I conceived "the old fashioned way" during college. He spends the summers with his father. Our second child, who is 4, I conceived through Cryogenic Lab frozen donor sperm via UI, on the first try. Now my partner is "taking her turn" and we did our first UI last week. Unfortunately the same donor we used before is no longer available, so we had to choose a new donor.

We have several lesbian couple friends who have children through donor sperm, but we are the only ones who used anonymous sperm through a sperm bank. I would love to share our experiences with others.

Melinda1975

Hi my Partner and I are planning on having a baby through CLI donor sperm and I was wanting to see if you could tell me how long the process takes once you choose your donor??? Congrats on your past success and good luck with your next....
Melinda

Stpaulgirls

I am wondering when you went in for IUI. At what hours after you saw the LH surge?

Heidi

Once you choose your donor and sign your Terms of Use letter, you're ready to go. If you know your cycle well, you can call and order. The tanks the sperm come in keep it frozen for 7 days. You can also opt to upgrade to a 14 day tank. As to the timing, it is most recommended to do the insemination 24 hours after testing positive for the LH surge (most women ovulate 12-36 hours after the LH surge). Personally, we test first thing in the morning and once we get a positive, call our doctor to schedule the IUI for the next morning. A big question we've had that we haven't gotten a good answer for is, How long does thawed sperm live? Online research suggests 12-36 hours. Our doctor postulates up to 3 days. Cryogenic couldn't provide me with an answer.

We're still waiting to find out if this IUI worked. My partner's cycles aren't dependable and the surge surely seemed early. We shall soon see!

Heidi

The first IUI attempt with my partner did not work. We think we may have been off on the timing. The donor we had chosen last month had only that one vial available, so if it didn't work we knew we were faced with choosing another donor. To our surprise, when going back to order for this month, our donor had more units available! We are doing a second insemination today!

momof2

I have two donor conceived children. The first is a 20 year old girl - I am her non-biological parent. The second is a 13 year old boy conceived via CLI donor sperm. Both children were conceived via vaginal insemination on the first try. I was never successful with IUI, and tried three times at age 35 without success before we decided to try the low-tech vaginal method. We were successful the first time. It was decidedly less expensive (by about $550) and much more comfortable. The first Dr. I went to would not even consider vaginal insemination as she was a fertility specialist. Other than age I didn't have any known issues. I met another Dr. at a party, quite by accident, after my first three unsuccessful IUI attempts. She told me she'd love to work with us and would have us try twice per cycle, two days in a row. The rest is history, about 8 months later we had our son. The point of all this is to say that I wouldn't automatically rule out the easy way to artificially inseminate, especially if you have a few unsuccessful IUI attempts and no known fertility issues.

I realize that this is not the conventional wisdom on the subject, but of my sample size of two thirty-five year old women, we had a 100% first-try success rate.

HapiJuiceBaby

Heidi... Awesome! We're sending good vibes your way!